Pumping Irony

I’ve been on medical leave all month, so I’m bored and ready to return to the *cough* “friendly skies” *cough* though I fully realize that as soon as I’m pronounced fit to return and I set foot in my domicile again I will immediately say something to the effect of “oh my gawd is this over with yet so I can go home?” The grass is always greener, indeed.

In spite of having the entire month off, I really didn’t delve into very many MMO’s. In fact, I spent the majority of game time in Guild Wars, which is not an MMO at all. I spent a lot of time adventuring and farming (boo hiss!) with my monk.

Guild Wars: Early in the month I happened to see Darren in-game and he was in dire need of assistance completing a quest and a mission. I didn’t realize his character was (still is?) still on Istan, which is the “noob island” of the Nightfall campaign. His dervish is level 18 and Darren gave me the impression he’s one of the millions of people who just don’t “get” Guild Wars design. It has levels but it’s not about levels like most MMO’s are so he was curious (and perhaps concerned?) about what was next. I gave a short explanation that hopefully at least got him pointed down the right mindset. Turns out his quest was a Master difficulty quest so even though I’m level cap and had a decent healing and protection hybrid build loaded, as well as good builds on my heroes, we had a rough time of it. Or perhaps I should just say I had a rough time of it since I was the healer. I think he actually made me perspire trying to keep them alive. SOE unleashed their Living Legacy promotion so Darren is in EQ2 now for the duration, enjoying that game’s chapter of Karen’s Revelry and Honor guild!

My next celebrity run-in was the Stormbringer himself: Van Hemlock! I was given an honorary induction into his little Tuesday N00b Club guild, meaning I received a guest invitation that allows me to travel to their Guild Hall for 8 hours. Since I had the month off I ended up making a point of meeting the TNC each week for adventure, fun and hilarity. Last week was our first foray into PvP. We started off doing the Zaishen challenge, which is “practice PvP” against a team of NPC’s. Van Hemlock set up the NPC teams to be single professions. I forget what the first team was, but we mowed them down and got a bit cocky about it. The second team was all rangers loaded with a trapper build. They cut through us like soft, warm butter. Repeatedly. Finally, our heads hung in shame, we proceeded to try PvP against, you know, other players. Rather than the dangerous and competitive world of the arenas we went to Cantha for some Alliance Battles. The TNC is a Luxon guild, while I’m in a Kurzick alliance but I’m fairly certain I can build up Luxon faction without harming my Kurzick standing. We did two battles. The first one, we (Luxons) won (yay! oh wait…) making a dramatic comeback at the end to score the final points. Kurzicks did the same on the second battle. Luxons started off strong and maintained a very healthy lead until the very end when the Kurzicks made an incredible comeback to win. Probably the most fun all month with the TNC was running the Catacombs of Kathandrax dungeon, which received brief mention on the most recent episode of the Van Hemlock podcast. One of the TNC guys was commenting how it was so different running with a real healer. Apparently they’ve grown quite accustomed to having high death penalties in their adventures. Just getting to the dungeon itself is a bit of a challenge, but we pulled it off with only a few casualties. We proceeded through the first two levels of the dungeon in relative caution with only one character dying (twice, sorry mate) then we entered the third level and challenged the boss, Ilsundur, Lord of Fire. I’d never been in this dungeon before so I didn’t know what to expect. Just this one boss in his chamber, easy pickings right? Right… If his massive AoE attacks weren’t enough to immediately put me on a feverish healing defensive while the flame-licked group scattered about, in my concentration on the health bars I just barely caught notice of “something else” in the periphery of the screen. I then heard a rumbling sound slowly growing louder. Just as I started to ask “Hey, what’s that sou…” *KABOOM* I became a crispy, flaming pancake, run over from behind by a gigantic rolling fireball! Ilsundur sets two of these monstrosities rolling, each in opposite directions around the chamber so not only are we fighting him but we have to watch out for the approach of these fireballs, both in front and behind us. Luckily “death by flaming steamroller” is on the rather short list of occurrences which do not contribute to death penalty so despite at least five full wipes, the only death penalty anyone incurred was due to legitimate combat deaths.

Oh, just to explain the “Stormbringer” thing, Van Hemlock seems to be cursed. Every single Tuesday, shortly after logging in and grouping up with him, storms appear. Two weeks ago they became so violent the power was knocked out in this section of town for nearly an hour. Last week, I had just come in from a several mile walk. Perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, not extremely humid or anything. Van Hemlock logs into GW and within 15 minutes I’m hearing thunder! Ten minutes later a full-on storm is roiling.

It also turns out that despite having completed the Nightfall campaign late last year, I did so in a manner that completely skipped at least three entire zones and two towns! Possibly more, but those were the latest discoveries. I skipped them so entirely that my map didn’t even show the zone portals, so I had no idea anything should have been there until just by chance I compared my map to a fully explored map of Elona. I don’t have the zones fully explored yet but they are on my map and I’ve reached both towns so I can map travel to them now. Farming? Initially I was farming Norn reputation from the Eye of the North expansion to build up my Norn skills, most notably Ursan Blessing which gives extreme bonuses to armor and strength. Yeah, my character is a monk so he’ll have less armor even in Ursan than a warrior would, but I’ve been unsuccessful with every other tactic to get through that Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu (and a few other items) so in desperation I’m looking to Ursan to power my way through it. Rank 8 so far, and not looking forward to repeating this on my warrior someday. I’m also wanting to get my Lightbringer reputation to maximum rank because of the Lightbringer AoE healing spell I’ve recently been introduced to and fallen in love with, but that particular reputation is very slow to increase so I’m definitely not looking forward to repeating it on any other character.

Finally, this month I finally got to see both the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, two of the most famous elite areas in the game! I’ve only been in one time to each, but I’m definitely looking forward to more and being able to learn my way around and which mobs drop the most sought-after items! The alliance I’m in has a daily schedule so I should be able to get involved with more and more high-end content as I get to know everyone better. If I can get into a Domain of Anguish group, that should be of great help with my Lightbringer reputation as well.

DDO: I didn’t get nearly as much DDO time as I’d hoped, mostly because of Guild Wars. I did manage to sneak around solo into the new Three-Barrel Cove wilderness area, but the second any mob noticed me I had to run for my life back to the inn. Wizards being super-squishy and all… I did do a few quests I’d never seen before, and in interesting groups. Oh, for the record, the new Monk class is awesome! I don’t have one to actually play myself, but just from what I saw being grouped with some, it looks like a blast. The only real gripe about them I’ve heard is from clerics, especially those from guilds who take things slower or perma-death guilds in particular. Monks need to keep going in order to maintain their ki so they tend to run ahead of the group and start fights to keep their ki up while everyone else sighs. I’m sure players will find a synergy soon though. In any event, my wizard did finally go adventuring once more, though someone needs to give me a lesson on DDO inventory management. Do I actually need all these robes, scepters, staves and wands? They each seem to have very unique properties so I’ve been reluctant to sell them but I’m nearly out of bag space now.

Hellgate: London: I put a little bit of time into HGL this month. Mostly in hopes of catching up with Hudson and Bildo in-game but that didn’t happen. It’s a shame the game was marketed as an MMO, for it definitely isn’t. In fact, Flagship seems to excel at marketing single-player games as MMO’s. Both HGL and Mythos seem to be solo-oriented with almost zero need to group with anyone other than “just for the hell of it.” I haven’t gotten far in either yet, so maybe that changes, but it seems silly for now. I thought HGL did a great job of nailing the shooter “feel” within an RPG context, far better than Tabula Rasa did. Although I’ll partially attribute that to HGL’s first-person view. Both HGL and TR do a horrid job in third-person. Why do console developers do such a great job with third-person shooters and the PC guys can’t pull it off to save their lives? Anyway, my only real gripe about the shooter aspect of HGL is the unlimited ammo. Sure, in LOTRO I love that my hunter doesn’t have to waste bag space stocking up arrows like I did in WoW (and risk running out in the middle of a raid), but HGL having unlimited ammo really trivializes the combat. All I have to do is hold down the fire button and move the reticule over the mobs until they die with no worries whatsoever about strategy or keeping track of my ammo. It did seem like they’ve squashed a lot of bugs in the months since I last played, and the performance is awesome now, but I still notice that it takes a very long time after quitting the game before resources are released. Memory leak? My Guild Wars alliance also has an HGL chapter, so perhaps I’ll try catching up with some of them and see how the grouping is. Speaking of Mythos, I guess a huge new makeover is coming to the test server. It’s already received the Overland treatment, where the whole game is open rather than being instanced. I haven’t been able to play in a very long time because there was a bug in the game that interfered with the Zune wireless networking services, causing Mythos to not react to any input (ie. I could login but not move). Sure, I could disable those two services and reboot (and I did once) but the Diablo click-fest game play just doesn’t interest me enough for it. Regardless, the latest update to Mythos’ test server fixed that bug so maybe, maybe, I’ll put some time in if I’m extremely bored and in a masochistic mood. I hear a future update will give an “MMO view” so maybe that will make it a more enjoyable experience. Then again, I absolutely cannot stand Dungeon Runners, so maybe not…

F2P: Nothing says “I’m bored!” more than going F2P. That also says a lot about EQ2 that I’d rather play any number of F2P games than login to EQ2, which I did re-install for the Living Legacy thing, and thus far haven’t managed to stay interested in playing for more than 5 minutes total this month. For no good reason in particular I always keep several F2P games installed but I never actually play any, at least not for any length of time. One thing I’ve noticed is that an awful lot of the F2P games seem to be all about soloing. You can create a warrior, mage, hunter, or priest-type character but that seems to make little real difference and only appeals to how you personally like to see your character kill things. I rarely see any incentive to group, unless the high level PvP/PK is better or safer in groups. Archlord has “auto looting” when you’re grouped, so you don’t have to waste time actually picking your loot up off the ground; it goes straight into your inventory. Other than laziness, I’ve seen no benefit to grouping there. The exception so far has been Rappelz. My initial impression is that it actually has a fairly helpful in-game community and I constantly see groups looking for more players, usually a cleric but often seeking a “damage dealer” (DD) class (which we’d call a “dps” class in other games). The classes in Rappelz do matter and they fit their roles more like a “real” (ie. Western AAA subscription) MMO “holy trinity.” There are several dungeons in the game, so you’ll see LFG’s for dungeon parties (DP) all the time. From the very little I can tell, dungeons are where the Cash Shop comes in: players buy the Stamina Savers to help keep them alive and earn extra XP and JP (Job Points for skills) while in the dungeons. Otherwise, the cash shop is aesthetic fluff items, for the most part, and not needed. In fact, in the little time I’ve put in I have received two or three stamina savers either as drops or quest rewards, so it’s entirely possible that the CS wouldn’t be needed at all? In addition to dungeon parties, which anyone of a certain level or rank can join, Rappelz has guild-only dungeon sieges which is a combination of PvE and PvP to own that dungeon, which gives some benefit to the guild. If my guild owned a certain dungeon, another guild can challenge my guild by first applying to raid the dungeon. If they kill the bosses before the timer expires they proceed to the actual siege, where both guilds fight for ownership of the dungeon.

I do notice that yes, F2P games have shallow game play (or at least don’t go to lengths to disguise the grind like our AAA ones do) but they do push the envelope in other areas. Rappelz seems to have a rather complicated pet system. Mabinogi allows your character to age, which I don’t think has been done in an MMO before. If the rumors of a Harry Potter MMO are true, I feel this would be a great aspect of game play where as students of Hogwarts, not only do we “level up” but each year of school our characters actually age and grow, just like the characters in the novels and movies do. If I understand correctly, Archlord seems to have some system set up where after a grueling set of dungeons or keep assaults, one player can become the archlord of that server, and receives super archlord armor and weaponry and a dragon mount, complete with AoE fire breath. Of course, he immediately becomes a target for whomever is waiting in the shadows with aspirations of becoming archlord himself. Who knows, I may actually put in more F2P time with the goal of exploring their specific features where they’re innovating into areas we haven’t really seen in our AAA subscription games.

Just thought I’d mention that DirectX 9.0c end-user runtime version 9.23.1350 was just released yesterday for your DX9 gaming enjoyment! That link points to the official download site, which requires Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation in order to download the installer. You are using a valid Windows, right? Right? Right… for the rest of you (shame, shame) Codecs.com also has the installer up for download.

Best.Superhero.Movie.EVER

’nuff said…

Little over a week ago, Tim Sweeney’s quote of “PC’s are good for anything, just not games” was taken out of context and rapidly spread across the ‘net as a doomsayer for PC gaming.  Sweeney was in fact slamming Intel for pushing its low-quality graphics hardware in mainstream OEM computers the typical non-geek customer would find at Best Buy, Target, or the Empire of Evil itself, Walmart.

Today, Alex St. John, a former programmer of DirectX, makes the counter-point that, in fact, consoles as we know them today, are dead.  This is Darren’s cue to pull a McConaughey and do some naked bongo-dancing — PC’s are saved and the evil consoles are dead!

St. John makes the exact same two points as Sweeney in his interview: Intel (and Microsoft) are to blame for the lousy performance or outright inability for the mainstream PC’s to game, and that we’ll soon be seeing a unification of GPU’s and CPU’s, eliminating the need for a software graphics API such as DirectX or OpenGL. Both Sweeney and St. John are very excited about the near future as both AMD and Intel are actively pursuing this very unification.

Likely, AMD’s acquisition of ATI will only aid them with their cause; Intel, on the other hand, needs to step up to the plate and develop a competitive GPU. My question: what becomes of Nvidia? They’re already doing the GPU and motherboard chipsets; will they take the initiative and produce their own line of CPU’s as well, with integrated GPU’s? Will they be acquired by Intel? Perhaps just license their GPU’s to Intel for unification with Intel’s CPU? Actually that might be a good idea — perhaps that way we could get AMD CPU’s but with Nvidia graphics rather than ATI… yummy!

I used to use my iPaq and eReader to read eBooks, which I very much enjoyed although the small screen on a PDA tends to get hard on the eyes, even though eReader offers a few textured backgrounds and wonderful fonts to soften the eye strain. Some eBooks I purchased from eReader’s online store, and some I created with a set of VBA scripts I wrote for Word to convert a .txt or .rtf into an eReader book.

I have eReader installed on my new Sprint Mogul (aka HTC 6800) but no eBooks and I’m not positive I want to go there again with that teeny little screen.

I know Sony has their Reader device, which is doing well. Trouble is I’ve become very biased against Sony in general so I tend to avoid buying anything from them. From the little I’ve read, Amazon.com’s new Kindle reader is even better than the Reader and has far more books available.

Any of the MMO bloggers have one (or the Reader?) who has an opinion on it? Or would I be better off waiting til the next generation of the device is on the market?

I don’t usually take these online quizzes but I enjoyed reading the results of this one from Tipa, Damion, and the indomitable Michael Zenke, I figured why not? Given the unfortunate passing of RPG diety Gary Gygax this past week this is an appropriate quiz: What D&D Character Are You?

Clocking in at 129 questions, this is easily the longest of this type of quiz I have taken. I was a bit shocked at the end result however:

Oh, just tell me already!

The announcement came today over at the Troll Lord Games forum, and is rapidly making the rounds on media and news channels that E. Gary Gygax, co-creator of the original Dungeons & Dragons role playing game, has passed away today at age 69.

Now I really want to get in a D&D game, just to honor the man for his creation, his vision, and allowing us the freedom to explore our own visions and stories for three decades. D&D, then AD&D 2nd Edition, was my introduction to the world of RPG’s and I still look back fondly on those days. From a D&D player’s perspective at the time, Gygax was a hero, and he will be missed by many.

I think I just might log into DDO and run the Delera’s Tomb quest chain, where Gary Gygax did the Dungeon Master voice-overs. Sure, his voice-acting was grating on the ears, but in a very weird and creepy way it was comforting to know that one of the Fathers of D&D took some minor involvement in the online game as well.

Update: 3/5/2008

Just wanted to mention the web comic Order of the Stick which created Issue #536 as a touchingly humorous tribute of Gary Gygax. Credit and thanks to Tipa to catching that for the rest of us.

First, let me start by wishing everyone a Happy Leap Year Day! I have absolutely no idea if that’s the proper phrase, but it sounds close enough.

February comes to a close seeing me bounce around from game to game (ie. my normal behavior) though I did get things accomplished in each.

MMORPG:

Vanguard: Dolndruth achieved level 29 and is currently working on the Coterie Infineum Sanctuary quest series. He’s in “Upper CIS” on the part where the group basically just goes in and grinds away until pieces of scavenged infineum armor which your character can actually use drop, along with a few type of energy gems. Once these are collected, they can be forged into infineum armor to better gear yourselves and to progress the quest chain. Dolndruth has been in twice so far, and only gotten a helmet half-prepared, and is waiting for a bigger piece to drop to complete the next quest. Oh, and the proper energy gem, which has yet to drop for anyone he’s grouped with so far. My friend Daniel rolled a cleric and is enjoying that more than his druid so I’m parking Dolndruth for a bit while Daniel gets his cleric up to where we can group together. He’s damn nearly there, running the Tomb of Lord Tsang several times, a few Hunter’s League quests, and ran with me to Donovan’s Roost to get the very first quest in the CIS chain.

DDO: As I’ve written about over the past few days, I made a return to DDO this month, and played my wizard, Koriander, to level 6! Actually, damn near level 7, which I will most likely achieve over the weekend, so I’m very excited about that. I also look forward to seeing my first-ever live event Sunday for DDO’s 2nd Anniversary.

LOTRO: I sorta-kinda started my return to LOTRO towards the end of the month. I created a monster, aka creep, to PvMP in the Ettenmoors, even got in my first monster raid which was a blast. My creep is an orc reaver, but I just realized today that in WoW, the hunter class was my absolute favorite to PvP with, so I rolled an Uruk this morning. Wow… I really wish the archer-type creeps were the orc archers I see running around. They look cool. My Uruk? Fugly. I don’t mean in a “well DUH, it’s a monster, they’re supposed to be ugly” kind of way, I mean in terms of the model and textures used to make the Uruk… just damn fugly. I’m tempted to whine that “the Uruk model breaks my immersion! QQ” but I won’t.

This morning I decided to “actually” play LOTRO for a bit so I logged in Arwellyn and did a few solo quests, running back and forth between the Lone Lands and North Downs to do so. Itching for some real action, I finally found a fellowship working on Book 2, so I joined them and we completed the entire Book together! Doing so also completed all the Wight Slayer deeds in the Lone Lands, so… bonus! The final instance, The Red Pass, was very fun, challenging, and very immersive. I have to say, while I totally love the open, non-instanced world of Telon in Vanguard, when it comes to getting your emotions up, your adrenaline flowing, and pushing some cool scripted story-telling, LOTRO is where it’s at.

I was dismayed to see changes in the kinship I’m a member of, Exodus. The original leader is still around, but rarely due to real-life constraints. The kinship has been turned over to another long-time member, which is fine, and he’s doing a great job. However… apparently Exodus has been asked to merge with Swifty and Hammo, another popular and very well-known kinship on the server, famous for their role-playing events. I love S&H, and even planned to put my Hobbit minstrel in there — Swifty and Hammo was originally very Hobbit-heavy, almost to the point of being exclusively Hobbits — before I decided I didn’t want to have umpteen alts in LOTRO. I’m not quite certain how I feel just yet about merging though. I really dislike when the dreaded Guild Drama rears its ugly head for any reason.

Side Note: Am I going out on a limb here mentioning the actual names of guilds I’m in? I typically don’t… not sure where that fine line in the sand is drawn when it comes to matters like this.

FPS:

Battlefield 2142: I’m semi-tempted to apply to a clan of some sort, provided I could find one that fit my preferences and also allowed me to play casually. I normally play the Assault class, though I have saved the last two unlocks just in case I decide to start trying out one of the others. I occasionally will do the Recon class if I know the other team is camping one of our bases with snipers, so I’ll try to snipe them back, then back to Assault. The Battlefield engine gets a bit “jumpy” when moving so sniping isn’t the easiest thing in the world for me in that game, though Daniel got a few unlocks to get the next sniper rifle and says it’s much, much smoother and easier, almost to the point of not being challenging at all. So I’ll give it some time and perhaps play with a few other classes before I decide where to put those unlocks. In the meantime, I am at Master Corporal Silver rank, with 329 points until Master Corporal Gold.

COD4: I don’t play COD4 heavily, so I’m still on Act 1. That’s fine by me, since the campaign is fairly short from what I’ve read. I’ve completed “War Pig” and next time I play, I’ll be on the “Shock and Awe” mission, which is nearly the end of Act 1. COD4 is hands-down easily the most immersive FPS I’ve played yet, in terms of the campaign, and I highly recommend it. I did play a handful of short multiplayer matches and, aside from being discouraged at being thoroughly (and I do mean thoroughly! schooled, spanked, and otherwise owned, I just don’t find the multiplayer aspect very compelling, and certainly not immersive. I’ve said before that it strikes me as same ‘ol, same ‘ol small skirmishes from 1998 only with better graphics, and I still feel that way after giving it a few more tries.

RTS:

World in Conflict: I used to really enjoy the RTS genre. I still have my CD’s of Warcraft III, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Age of Mythology, Total Annihilation (friggin awesome in its day!), Ground Control, and probably one or two others, though none are installed. WiC is the spiritual successor of the Ground Control series, and is an Action RTS, where you just jump right into the action, there’s no resource gathering and base building garbage here. Back when I did play RTS, back before I’d ever heard of MUD’s, MMO’s, or Richard Bartle, I suspect I’d have still ranked quite highly as an Explorer player type. I always spend too much time exploring the map, watching my little troops fight their little battles from interesting camera angles, and just having a good ol’ time. Unfortunately for my little troops, all those attention-grabbing diversions (have I mentioned my already-short attention span?) tend to mean I’m not micro-managing anything else, so while I can usually scrape by in campaign mode, if I dare go online I’m doing so with a huge red “spank me hard, daddy!” flag over my head. Even with the exceptionally minimal level of micro-managing in WiC, I dared to venture online for the second time ever this month, and yeah… it still hurts to sit down… On a positive note, watching all the explosions and other eye candy as my little troops died cursing their incompetent diety (that’d be me) was spectacularly impressive to behold!

In closing, I’d like to thank everyone for the attention aimed in my general direction this month, I was humbled and honored to receive a few links and mentions out there. February kicked off with Darren naming it “blog of the week” in Shut Up, We’re Talking #19, which was truly shocking to hear since I had no idea it was coming. I was out walking listening to the show and suddenly he’s talking about this and I’m all “woot! That’s my blog they’re talking about!” while all the neighbors are looking at me strangely or rushing their children inside to safety from that crazy fool shouting outside… The Storytelling post was linked on several other sites, and somehow the First Guild post was mentioned on Massively! That was a huge honor (and shock) to get linked there. It’s funny, and amazing, the ways people stumble across your blog… I’m also noticing more and more interesting search terms that bring people here as well…

I cut my teeth on “real” RPG’s back in the day, starting with AD&D 2nd Edition, then expanding my horizons to other venues like Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Mage (only World of Darkness I ever experienced), Star Wars, then finally Palladium’s Fantasy RPG and Rifts.

I get a bit nostalgic when I read about Cameron and SmakenDahead and other bloggers getting their pen-and-paper on. Problem is I’m gone more than I’m home so I haven’t managed to make any actual friends here in Jacksonville. I talk to the random neighbor here and there but no one I’d be friends with, and certainly no one I’d game with. So… is there such a thing as online pen-and-paper? I have a vague understanding that D&D 4.0 will have some type of online component for a subscription fee. Not sure how I feel about that concept.  If I had to wager a guess, I might be limited to finding an IRC channel running RPG and Die Roll scripts?

I did recently discover an RPG shop but I didn’t hear if they knew of any adult groups looking for fresh blood, and my wonky schedule has always been a problem for events with other people, live or MMO, which is why I’m normally stuck with PUG’s even though I’m always in great guilds.

I’d love to try my hand at RPG’s again but I have a feeling if that ever happens, I’ll be limited to an online-only scenario…

Darren must have slipped on the ice and sustained a head injury — he voted PI.net as “Blog of the Week” on SUWT #19 today!

Thanks, Darren

Oh, for the record Brenden, I do read Another Here I just don’t have it linked here… I suppose I could fix that after I click Publish, eh?